Silent Appliances - The Secret Invasion from China (Fall 2013)

Silent Appliances - The Secret Invasion from China (Fall 2013)

In October 2013, cyber-weapons hidden in home appliances imported from China were discovered in the St. Petersburg region of Russia. The products in question were seemingly innocuous items such as electric kettles and irons. However, inside them lurked a spy chip with a secretly embedded Wi-Fi module.

When in use, these appliances automatically detect the surrounding wireless LAN networks, and hack into and connect to weak routers such as WEP, which has lax security. Once connected, they can be used to send mass spam emails, spread malware, or even be used as a botnet for attacks. In other words, these "commodities" placed in unprotected homes have become a silent front in the cyber war. With a range of about 200 meters, it was believed that it was possible to infiltrate a neighbor's house or office.

Russian security experts became aware of the problem by detecting suspicious communications and tracing their origin during routine network monitoring. The unbelievable discovery that the originators were household kettles and irons made it public that home appliances were the foothold for a network attack. The Russian-language media outlet Rosbalt was the first to report the story, and later Western media outlets such as Gizmodo and The Register also picked up on the shocking news.

Russian authorities investigated electronics stores and distribution channels in the country and seized some of the relevant Chinese products. The case has prompted discussion of the need to strengthen surveillance of such imported products from the perspective of national information security. This incident also occurred at a time when major Chinese telecommunications equipment manufacturers such as Huawei and ZTE were suspected of espionage activities in Western countries, leading to increased suspicion of Chinese-made electronic devices in general in Russia.

This incident, in which a silent appliance was in fact an information hunter, became a symbol of the cyber risks that lurk in everyday life. It was like a spoonful of peace with a drop of poison lurking in the middle, a quiet and subtle "modern-day invasion.